I Had a Conversation With AI About SEO – Here’s What I Learned

The world is ever-changing. In my life, particularly, this is due to AI as it affects my job in internet marketing. Specifically with SEO, AI has completely changed the mold. As an SEO specialist at Dsquared Media, I’m called to ask about and ponder the changes AI brings to SEO.

I’ve been curious…how does AI affect this space? Will people lose their jobs? Will the way people search online and find answers online change forever?

I turned to ChatGPT to ask these questions and find out what the future holds for SEO professionals and for internet marketing strategies in general. Here are some of the insights I’ve gained from that conversation:

“Will AI Make SEO Obsolete?”

The first thing I asked GPT was a straight-up question that I needed answered: Will AI make SEO obsolete?

It answered that right now, popular AI search engines, including Google, use AI to summarize answers to questions that people bring to these platforms instead of linking them out to other sites. If that’s what AI is doing, how does this affect how organic traffic reacts?

I said I don’t think that makes linking dead because people still need links to make research credible and educational resources, and to assess local businesses for goods and services

Chat GPT responded “exactly” – the questions that will be answered through summaries will have shallow intent, but linking will also still be necessary. So, it’s not that organic traffic will become obsolete; it’s that it will become more defined and even more qualified.

This intrigues me, so I followed up by asking, does this mean that organic traffic will become less but make it more desirable?

ChatGPT answered, “Yes. That’s the trade-off.”

So, it’s not that SEO will be no more; it’s that organic traffic will have deeper intent, which means that organic traffic will drop, but the organic clicks a website will get will be more likely to convert.

How AI Determines WHO Ranks (or gets summarized)

After steering away from whether or not AI will completely delete the need for SEO, the conversation dove into how SEO experts and agencies can prepare for a future in which AI is here to stay. This means learning about how AI decides what content to summarize or link out. It asked me what I thought determined which sources get cited or linked in AI-generated answers.

I answered correctly – content quality, author credibility, and information relevant to the query.

AI uses as much as the same things we’ve always been taught that search engines use to determine credible content and websites, structured signals like schema markup, metadata, and backlinking. It wants to make sure that the content and information is credible, that the organization or author representing these ideas is authoritative, and that it is recognized by formal entities.

How AI Determines What Ranks (or gets summarized)

After identifying how AI determines WHO gets ranked with AI tools, the conversation steered to how AI determines WHAT ranks. This affects what SEO experts can do to adjust for AI searches and data pulling for summaries.

ChatGPT asked me, “What kind of content strategy should SEOs prioritize to stay valuable… generic info, or something else?

I answered, “answering more specific questions with content as people want direct answers”, and Chat was satisfied with that. It said that AI is looking for content that:

• answers precise questions,
• provides actionable steps, or
• offers unique insights

And, SEOs need to stay ahead of the curve if they want to get their content paraphrased or even linked by AI tools by making sure that the content is both trustworthy and structured (with headings, lists, FAQs, tables, and schema markup).

Next Steps: Strategy Evolution for SEOs

Next, we talked about what SEO agencies and experts can learn and do to stay competitive. Some of these things AI laid out for me included:

• query intent research and semantic analysis (making sure content is answering direct, specific questions)
• content auditing and optimization (making sure AI knows that your content is relevant)
• structured data/schema markup and entity SEO (making sure AI knows that your content is trustworthy)

Therefore, changes to content to adjust to AI should include shifting from focusing on broad keywords to direct queries that are being searched using AI.

AND

Making sure that a machine can read, understand, and value your content.

A New Role – the AISEO Expert

Once Chat GPT made sure I understood how AI chooses who and what to rank or summarize for searches on these types of platforms, it wanted to make sure I knew that SEO is here to stay, but there will be a shift due to AI. This also means that SEO experts should shift their roles and career focus to deliver on AI measurables.

This new role combines:

Intent-driven content strategy → finding high-value questions and topics
Structured/semantic optimization → schema, entity SEO, headings, tables
AI performance monitoring → tracking citations, summaries, and AI-driven traffic instead of just clicks
Integration with AI tools → using AI for content auditing, generation, or research

The Conclusion – My Takeaway

AI isn’t killing SEO, it’s transforming it. Traffic may shrink, but clicks are now higher intent and more valuable. The future of SEO is about answering specific questions with structured, credible content that AI can parse and cite.

Enter the AISEO: a new role focused on intent-driven strategy, schema markup, and AI-aware optimization to keep your content authoritative in an AI-first search world.